MMMM # 227 -- Journalism's Slippery Slope

       Maybe it's the anonymous comments* newspapers have been allowing after their online stories, or the general havoc The Great Recession has turned loose on the profession, but life is getting sloppy in the wider world of journalism. 
     Those web comments are turning up inside news stories now. I'll see a reporter quote a comment from "Bamamama34" or "wombat12" inside a news story as a way of showing what people think about the subject of the story.
     Really? An anonymous comment as part of the story? This isn't Woodward-Bernstein at The Washington Post meeting with Deep Throat. The only way to get information about Watergate was by anonymous sources.

     Then there are the "news" sites operated by the IP's and portal companies...like Yahoo.com and Charter (cable) .net. 
     I'm not sure if there are any actual journalists involved in the process, but pictures used with some stories are terribly misleading. Like the one about the plane crash in which passengers recorded the actual crash on video and posted it online. Here's the photo illustration used for the story:

The problem is that it was a small single engine private plane that was involved, not a big passenger jet. And their version of a story about changes to a new building at the site of the World Trade Center used this illustration, although the towers, we all know, are long gone.

     It's just sloppy work. And as the TV Networks have cut back because of the Great Recession, you can also spot more and more errors on those national broadcasts.

ALSO: The latest Q&A from the folks hammering together the TDAW newspapers in Huntsville, Birmingham and Mobile is out. Still no word on exactly when the papers will stop seven day a week publication, leaving The Montgomery Advertiser the largest daily paper in Alabama. 

     This week they defend the Wild West nature of their online forums, which are even worse than the after-story comment they still allow. 

     *And Speaking of those comments, a study quoted by Poynter suggests the quality of comments increases when readers are required to provide real names. Amen!

[The Monday Morning Media Memo is a regular feature of TimLennox.com/]